Around 5 percent of hourly workers in the United States earn the minimum wage, according to the 2012 data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Census Bureau. Most are 25 or younger and 69 percent of them work part-time. They are not their families’ sole breadwinner; they come from households that don’t depend on their earnings. Thus, the beneficiary of a minimum-wage increase is more likely to be a teenager in a tony suburb than a single mom in the ghetto. And hiking the minimum wage will diminish the job prospects for that single mom. A 1995 study concluded that mothers in states that
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